


Ever Decreasing Circles

by Lurlur



Category: Good Omens (TV)
Genre: 6000 Years of Friendship (Good Omens), Aziraphale Loves Crowley (Good Omens), Aziraphale/Crowley First Kiss (Good Omens), Crowley Loves Aziraphale (Good Omens), Enemies to Friends to Lovers, Episode: s01e03 Hard Times, First Kiss, M/M, Psychic Abilities, Temptation
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-09-09
Updated: 2020-09-09
Packaged: 2021-03-07 03:02:05
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 5,550
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/26380024
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Lurlur/pseuds/Lurlur
Summary: A good temptation is all about recognising the gap between want and need. Crowley can sense both and it makes him excellent at his job. It also makes him pretty good at understanding his hereditary enemy over the years.Or: Lurlur's take on the Episode 3 cold open.
Relationships: Aziraphale & Crowley (Good Omens), Aziraphale/Crowley (Good Omens), Crowley & Eve (Good Omens)
Comments: 39
Kudos: 231





	Ever Decreasing Circles

**Author's Note:**

> Inspired by a post on @joan-daardvark's tumblr about how Crowley can sense what people want. 
> 
> My thanks to NarumiKaiko for her excellent beta work, and MovesLikeBucky for cheering me on as always. Love you both very much.

“Get up there and make some trouble.”

Crawly doesn’t need to be told twice. Whatever is up there has to be better than anything going on down here where it’s just pain and anger and confusion. He burrows upwards, figuratively at first, until physics and dirt demand that he take a physical form. His snout pushes through soft earth, his eyes blind, until sweet air greets his tongue.

It’s almost painfully bright up here, with so many scents and sounds. Crawly doesn’t know what he was expecting, but he’s overwhelmed with the sensations. He slithers out of the ground and finds somewhere to hide where he can collect himself.

It’s almost a full day later when he emerges again, having observed the garden from under a fragrant bush. The grass under his belly is cool and damp, the sun warms his back, and something deep inside him yearns for a flat, sun-baked rock to bask on. He’s never felt this before, a wanting, a desire, an urge to be fulfilled. It’s quite pleasant--he thinks as he winds his way across the garden in search of such a rock--this feeling of being not-quite-complete.

The pleasantness is magnified tenfold when Crawly locates a perfect basking rock and curls himself up on its warm surface. It’s two parts, he decides, the wanting and the fulfilment. Wanting something out of reach would become a torture, but having something without the wanting first wouldn’t be as satisfying.

He dozes on the rock while listening out for opportunities for troublemaking. He’s meant to be working, after all, not just learning and sunbathing. He wonders how long he might be allowed to stay up here. His assignment is vague at best and there’s so much trouble he could cause if given time. Barely 24 hours on Earth and Crawly knows exactly where he prefers to spend his time, even if the garden is just another kind of prison.

The angels walking the walls are a stark enough reminder of that. Crawly wonders if the humans mind, if they even know what it is to be imprisoned. Do they know there’s more to the world than what they can see within their beautiful enclosure?

The blond angel with the flaming sword drops down from the wall and into the garden, just a short distance from where Crawly is lying. Doing his best to appear as an innocent and harmless resident of the garden, Crawly watches the angel as it circles a tree heavy with fruit. The sword is held with the sort of easy alertness of someone who is proficient but not careless, someone who knows that what it holds is a weapon, not a tool. Crawly shrinks into himself, aware that he is exactly what the angel should be looking to strike with that fiery blade.

Unbidden, his tongue flickers out between his lips to taste the air. The angel is overpowering all the more subtle scents of the garden, but Crawly recognises something freshly familiar within the scent profile. The angel wants.

Before Crawly can discern much more, the angel completes its circuit of the tree and takes flight. He watches it propel itself back up to the top of the wall, all the while wondering what an angel could possibly have want of.

Wondering if the answer might be in the tree it was inspecting, Crawly reluctantly leaves his warm rock and climbs the trunk, settling himself amongst the lower limbs of the tree. He can smell the fruit, sweet and ripe, and wonders for the first time about what it might feel like to eat.

There’s nothing immediately different about this tree, it feels just like all the other fruit trees that Crawly has seen in the garden; permanently in flower and fruit at the same time, perfectly ripe offerings that don’t turn to rot. It’s unremarkable.

He’s about to give it up as a dead end and return to his sunbathing when the woman, Eve, approaches. Her want is sharp and laced with trepidation. Crawly can taste so much within it, he’s almost knocked off his perch by how clearly he can perceive her desire.

Eve wants the fruit of this tree, specifically this tree. She’s not hungry, Crawly can sense her want more clearly than that. He focuses on it, using his more infernal gifts to get a feel for what will satisfy her. She reaches for a fruit, her fingers brushing the red skin but pulling away empty.

Moving slowly so as not to startle her, Crawly slithers closer and lowers his head until they are face to face.

“Hello,” he says, feeling a little silly. Eve smiles and caresses the top of his head in a way that sends a shiver down his very long spine.

“Hello, snake,” Eve says, utterly unafraid.

Crawly pushes into her hand, letting his tongue tickle the inside of her wrist. Her want is so close to the surface that Crawly barely has to look for it.

“What’s so special about this tree?” he asks, having long since decided that questions were worth the punishment.

“It’s the tree of knowledge of good and evil,” Eve says, there’s no guilt or defence in her voice despite having been caught practically red-handed. “We aren’t supposed to eat from it.”

Crawly nods as if he understands before deciding that he, in fact, doesn’t understand at all.

“Why not? It’s in the garden that you humans have been given dominion over, isn’t it?” Crawly thinks it sounds like a ridiculously arbitrary rule and he’s not at all fond of those.

“It’s forbidden,” Eve says with a helpless shrug. She wants to know so very badly but there are no answers available.

“That doesn’t seem very fair,” Crawly says flatly. “Why put a tree in your garden that you aren’t allowed to touch? If it was that important, why not put it far away, out of sight?” Eve looks thoughtful, her hand slowing in its movements over Crawly’s scales. “Go on, have a bite, I won’t tell anyone,” he says after a moment.

Eve’s eyes shine with the possibility, a joyful smile spreading across her face. Her want spikes higher still as she plucks a fruit from the tree.

“Are you sure?” she asks, her eyes fixed on the red fruit in her hand.

“Positive,” Crawly promises, “I won’t tell a soul.”

Eve’s teeth break the skin, causing juice to well up from within the fruit and run down her chin. The scent of sugar and something floral floods Crawly’s senses, but it appears to be just a normal fruit. He watches her chew and swallow, wiping juice from her face with the back of her wrist.

Just as he’s about to congratulate himself on a job well done, Eve freezes, her eyes wide. Her jaw drops open and she slowly turns her head, looking from the fruit in her hand to Crawly and back again.

“I understand,” she says in a whisper.

“What? What do you understand?” Crawly begins to suspect that he’s missed something. “What’s happened?”

Eve doesn’t answer, instead spinning on the ball of her foot and walking off into the garden, the bitten fruit still clutched in her hand.

Making the quick decision that he doesn’t really want to be found looped over the branches of the forbidden tree, Crawly slithers down to the ground and finds somewhere to hide. As curious as he is about the fallout of what’s just happened, he doesn’t fancy his chances against an armed and angry angel. Crawly is very much on enemy turf and at a distinct disadvantage, so he lays low in a cave made by tree roots and rocks and waits.

When, some hours later, divine retribution comes, nothing in the garden is ignorant of it. Crawly is shaken awake by the very ground beneath him, sending him into a panic that sees him shoot out of his cave and halfway up the nearest tree. The tree is shaking worse than the ground, but Crawly can only cling on tightly and wonder how snakes deal with falling from great heights.

The shaking subsides eventually, the end marked with an enormously loud explosion that spooks all the birds into taking flight. Crawly doesn’t trust the stillness that follows and simply tightens his coils around the tree, waiting for the next cataclysm to rock the world.

The sun is getting low and the shadows long when Crawly senses a change around him. Tentatively, he tastes the air and sifts through the traces of tree, earth, and ozone to find the new addition. Someone nearby wants to be reassured, he realises, tasting again to get a better sense of it. Someone wants their worries to be soothed, they are tangling themselves in knots of anxiety over something they’ve done and they need someone to be gentle with them.

Crawly thinks that there is nothing that could be further from his job description; kind, gentle, and reassuring are not the attributes of a successful demon. However, an unfulfilled want is the crack through which temptation may squirm. Temptation _is_ something that Crawly thinks he might be good at.

Lowering himself to the ground, Crawly catches a glimpse of the blond angel from before. It’s standing on top of the wall high above him, wringing its hands and pacing. Undoubtedly, it’s the source of the desire to be comforted that Crawly can sense. He slithers up the wall, gripping the uneven rocks with his long, muscular body, only to realise at the last moment that the angel wants to talk to someone who looks the same, with arms and legs and all that. Crawly assumes a human appearance as soon as the bulk of his body is safely on top of the wall.

“Well, that went down like a lead balloon,” he says confidently. It wouldn’t do to show fear in front of the enemy, far better to act natural, act as though this was the sort of thing that happens every day.

The angel nods and then looks confused. It doesn’t matter, the cutting edge of its need has been dulled, it isn’t alone any more. Crawly rather likes the way the angel looks at him, like he’s a comfort rather than a threat. If Crawly lets that influence the way he responds to the angel’s distress, well, there’s no one around to see it.

Over the years that follow, Crawly spends as much of his time on Earth as his superiors will allow. He practises reading what people want and works out how to give it to them in the most tumultuous ways. It becomes something of an art form to him, reading what the humans desire and delivering something that almost, but not quite, meets the need. Sometimes he tempts the human to take what they want when it doesn’t belong to them. Other times he provides a hollow facsimile of the desire which only sharpens the human’s want into a consuming lust. The temptations he’s particularly proud of are the ones where he gives the human exactly what they want and they find that it doesn’t make them happy at all. No one is as good at torturing a human mind as the human that occupies it.

Crawly doesn’t consider himself a monster, though. This is the whole point of free will, after all. He merely provides the opportunity for a human to make a choice, to choose whether to be virtuous or greedy, honest or selfish. He’s just as delighted by a human taking the path of righteousness as he is with those who succumb to sin. They have the freedom of choice and watching them use it is always so thrilling. He envies them that freedom, the free will that was their gift and denied to God’s first creations. He is what he is and what he was always meant to be; thinking about it all gives him something of a headache on the best of days.

He’s in one of the small towns that border the river, admiring the efficiency of pulling off a temptation within a geographically limited group of humans. It’s far better than following the early nomadic groups about, trying to avoid detection. Clever humans, always thinking of things that make his life easier and theirs just a bit worse.

There’s plenty of gossip to be gathered in this town, Crawly soon learns. A local merchant has apparently lost the plot and decided to build a giant boat. He’s been heard ranting about the end of the world which Crawly is pretty sure he’d know something about if it was imminent. Still, a little drama sounds like just the ticket for a lazy afternoon. Crawly gets directions from a local and heads out of town.

He sees the boat before anything else, perched on top of a hill and miles from any major body of water. It looks quite comical. Crawly’s spirits lift as he approaches, looking forward to a good few hours of laughing at the foolishness of humans.

Judging by the small knot of spectators, he won’t be the only one. People are jostling and joking, watching a bizarre parade of animals march towards the boat and board, apparently of their own volition. A flash of white catches his eye, standing out amongst the darker clothes of the locals. His afternoon just got all that much more interesting.

Crawly pauses, holding back from the crowd and allowing his senses to spread out. The petty desires of men are swamped by angelic want- Crawly focuses on that burning pillar of emotion. The angel is lonely, conflicted, and in desperate need of someone to talk to. Crawly can sense Aziraphale’s turmoil as keenly as he can smell the imminent rain on the air. If Aziraphale needs a sympathetic ear, Crawly thinks that his seem sympathetic enough to do the job. He approaches Aziraphale through the crowd, shouldering his way past gawping bystanders to install himself at Aziraphale’s left side.

“Hello, Aziraphale,” he says, allowing himself to sound exactly as pleased as he is to see his heavenly counterpart on Earth.

The palpable relief that colours Aziraphale’s mood is intoxicating- Crawly sways into it as if to drink his fill. It never feels like this with the humans, never like this rush of gratitude and warmth that wraps around him like a blanket. Aziraphale is pleased to see him, too.

This is how it goes for many more years. Crawly wanders the realms of humanity, spreading temptation and disharmony enough to please his superiors, learning enough about humanity to appease his endless curiosity, and honing his ability to read the wants of those around him. He crosses paths with Aziraphale intermittently, always drawn in by the angel’s desire for company and reassurance.

Together, they bear witness to many of the great triumphs and tragedies of humanity. They laugh at the folly in Babel, mourn the people of Sodom and Gomorrah, paint lambs’ blood on door frames in Egypt, and drink a toast to the Christ child in Bethlehem.

Barely three decades after that toast, they meet again on a hill in Golgotha. Aziraphale is projecting his need for sympathy and company so strongly that it’s a struggle not to simply take him in an embrace. Instead, Crowley speaks his new, chosen name to another being for the first time. The gesture is small, easily lost in the heavy whirl of emotions affecting all those on the hilltop, but Aziraphale hears it for what it is and relaxes minutely. All of the distress and confusion is still just as present but, once Aziraphale realises that he doesn’t have to suffer this alone, Crowley can feel his relief. He stays beside the angel until dawn, until the body of the carpenter is brought down. Then it feels a little too much like intruding and he makes his excuses.

This pattern of orbiting the angel, sensing his wants and needs, tending to them, it suits Crowley well enough. He enjoys feeling useful and, damn it all, he likes making Aziraphale smile. It’s entirely undemonic of him, but his stomach leaps when he sees that blond puff of hair across a crowded marketplace. He doesn’t mean to be following Aziraphale, but he is always the one who approaches, the one who offers conversation, the one who notices the other. If that’s what Aziraphale needs, then Crowley can provide it. It makes him happy to provide it. Crowley doesn’t like to think about _just_ how happy he is to meet Aziraphale’s needs, that’s a worry for another day.

In Rome, less than a decade after the nastiness in Golgotha, Crowley is feeling miserable. He’s found a tavern in which to drink himself numb, but it’s a temporary solution. Physically, he can drink as long as he likes, but there’s a finite amount of alcohol in the world and he would run out eventually. Then he’d have to face the reality that no matter what he can think up to do to humans, they have already thought of it and designed a way to do it more efficiently.

He’s just about to settle into a long sulk, closed off from everything around him, when a bright effigy appears at his side.

“Crawl-” Aziraphale shakes his head, “Crowley?”

As rotten as he feels, Crowley can’t ignore Aziraphale, not completely. They’re friends, even if they’ve never said it out loud.

Aziraphale is jittery, unsure of himself as he tries to make conversation and Crowley has to force himself to remember that Aziraphale has never approached him before. Not only is this a risk for him, he’s in unfamiliar territory and unsure whether his friendly advances will be welcomed. Crowley’s bad mood is no reason to push Aziraphale away- one temptation gone awry is not worth throwing away a friendship that spans millennia. He takes a subtle taste of the air, just a tiny amount to see if he’s reading Aziraphale correctly.

He’s not even close to prepared for what he finds.

Aziraphale’s want usually tastes of loneliness, a need to be comforted and reassured in the face of unpleasant realities, a longing for someone who understands like he does. Lately, it’s been a touch more specific to the point where Crowley can almost sense the shape of the person that Aziraphale wants to appear. He deliberately doesn’t inspect that too closely, not prepared for either the confirmation or disappointment that would result. Today, Aziraphale doesn’t want to be comforted or consoled, he doesn’t need companionship or understanding. What Aziraphale wants, more than anything at this moment, is to make Crowley feel better.

No one has ever cared about Crowley’s feelings this way and it knocks him back. Aziraphale isn’t nervous because he’s approaching a demon or worried about what heaven might think. He’s anxious because he’s not used to offering this kind of comfort. He’s certainly not used to really caring about the outcome. Aziraphale is invested in helping Crowley to cheer up, or at least be distracted from his worries for a while.

Despite himself, Crowley smiles and softens. If a happier Crowley is what Aziraphale wants, then Crowley thinks he can accommodate that. After all, he’s never had an oyster before and he enjoys trying new things.

Tempting humans becomes almost too easy for a while after that. Their needs are so transparent and their wills so weak. Crowley does some of his best work whilst travelling around Africa and Asia, but he’s finding it dull and repetitive. Every so often, he reaches out his senses to see whatever trouble Aziraphale is getting up to and pops along to see about sharing a drink or twenty.

No matter what Aziraphale says out loud, he’s always pleased to see Crowley, always delighted to have a conversation where he doesn’t need to conceal his nature or mission. He doesn’t live amongst humans as easily as Crowley does, which is always a surprise. Crowley imagines that his eyes and snakey habits will unsettle humans, and that Aziraphale’s calming angelic aura will soothe them. In practice, people tend to be comforted by Crowley’s obvious otherness, having something that helps them to make sense of why they feel odd around him, whereas Aziraphale just unsettles them without any clear cause.

Aziraphale spends so much of his time being lonely and alone that Crowley begins to invent reasons to be nearby. He travels less frequently, establishing himself in Northern Europe for a while. He’s been on the right side of Hell’s bad books for long enough that, aside from the occasional targeted temptation, he’s got free rein over his work.

There’s no avoiding the fact that Aziraphale now actively wants Crowley’s company, that his yearning for companionship or just another body with which to share a flask of wine now solely features Crowley as the friend he wants most.

It troubles Crowley sometimes, to think that Aziraphale wants him nearby for purely social reasons. Does he have no other friends? Is there no one in all of Heaven who has found delight in long evenings spent with Aziraphale, a platter of the local cuisine, and a good fire? He wonders if he has corrupted Aziraphale, if he has unduly influenced him into wanting the company of a demon. As much as Crowley tells himself that he doesn’t care about what happens to Aziraphale, he knows that he could never forgive himself if he were to cause the angel to Fall.

The fact that Crowley exists in Aziraphale’s orbit, purely by choice, for centuries, doesn’t occur to him. It doesn’t trouble him that the only company he longs for is that of Aziraphale, or that he’s investing significant time and resources into being nearby as much as possible. Crowley has no other friends. And he’s quite aware that what he feels for Aziraphale is only growing.

One overly foggy morning in the Kingdom of Wessex, Crowley is unhappily strapping on his armour. He’s been camped out here for several months, having heard that Aziraphale had taken up as one of Arthur’s knights. He knows that sooner or later, Aziraphale will come. Prancing about as the Black Knight, scaring off tax collectors and wandering knights-errant from bothering the people in the valley he’s claimed, well, it’s all a bit of fun. The armour could be more comfortable, and he’s never going to get the hang of horses, but the town criers keep making declarations about his evil deeds, so it’s balancing out in his favour.

He smells Aziraphale long before his man summons Crowley out for a meeting. Maybe it’s the great, hulking cloak, or the metal polish, but Aziraphale’s scent is different enough to make Crowley cautious. The undertone of loneliness is still there, but muted. Aziraphale wants to solve this Black Knight problem far more, he needs a win. Crowley can do that, if that’s what Aziraphale wants.

He keeps his helm on, even tries to change his voice a little, to conceal his identity from Aziraphale. It doesn’t work. Hearing his old, discarded name from Aziraphale’s mouth actually hurts and, like the wounded snake he is, he snaps back.

For the first time in centuries, Crowley feels wrong-footed by Aziraphale. He’s defensive and then grasping, trying to overcompensate for his temper. Nothing he says lands right and he can feel Aziraphale getting frustrated with him. It was stupid of him to suggest working together at this point, he knows that as soon as he’s spoken the words, but the damage is done. Aziraphale walks away and Crowley is left alone.

Despite worrying himself into a frenzy over their last interaction, Crowley doesn’t have long to wait before Aziraphale is back on his figurative doorstep, wringing his soft hands and enquiring after the state of Crowley’s wine cellar. It’s only been a few short decades since they’ve last seen one another and yet the political landscape has shifted dramatically.

Under Arthur, Aziraphale had finally found some measure of human friendship. Now that things are changing so rapidly, he’s on the outside once more. Crowley tries not to be pleased that Aziraphale will still come to him for comfort and friendship. He’d really thought he’d ruined their connection with his disastrous suggestion about joining forces.

Centuries pass as they ever did, and Crowley’s orbit gets tighter and tighter as he’s drawn closer to the gravitational centre of Aziraphale. The Arrangement is born following a particularly unpleasant job they’d both found themselves assigned to. Crowley concedes a defeat with minimal complaint, allowing Aziraphale to make the best of a bad situation.

That evening, they sit together in near silence, drinking until they can pretend that forgetting is something they can do. Crowley has never felt Aziraphale want him so much as he does right then. The air feels thick with it but he doesn’t know how to reach out, how to offer more of himself than Aziraphale already has. It’s love, of course, Crowley’s not stupid. He knows they love each other by now. What he doesn’t know, what he can’t be sure of, is whether Aziraphale knows.

When Aziraphale finally begins to speak, offering Crowley the partnership that he’s dreamed of for millennia, Crowley hears it for exactly what it is: the safest proposal that Aziraphale can make.

They carry on like this for almost a thousand years. Crowley slowly creeping closer when Aziraphale allows, always waiting for the moment where Aziraphale will put his hands up and say “enough now, close enough” but it doesn’t come.

He gets better at reading what Aziraphale wants and differentiating that from what Aziraphale _needs_. Sometimes, he manages to do both at once. Like saving Aziraphale from the guillotine in Paris. He _needed_ to be saved from his own foolish decisions, he _wanted_ to be saved in style by someone who cares about what happens to him. Sometimes, Crowley just indulges Aziraphale because, damn it all, it makes him feel good to please Aziraphale. Even after all this time, he still melts whenever that bright, guileless smile is directed at him. Hamlet is a good play- Crowley barely has to exert himself to make it a success, but he would have moved the moon itself to get the tsunami of delighted gratitude that Aziraphale exudes whenever the play is mentioned.

This is why, Crowley thinks as he stands alone in St James’s Park, it hurts so much to be denied the one thing he’s asked for. He felt Aziraphale’s fear of having to face a world without Crowley beside him, it’s almost a perfect mirror of his own fear of losing Aziraphale, but Aziraphale just wouldn’t listen. The last thing that Crowley wants is to leave Aziraphale, he wants to protect them both.

Whatever gifts Aziraphale has, it’s never been more clear to Crowley that this mild psychic sense is not something they share. If it were, Aziraphale would have understood, and Crowley wouldn’t be staring at the ducks on his own.

Later still, there’s a church, rare books, Nazi spies, and a bomb redirected by demonic influence. They haven’t spoken since that day in the park- Crowley hadn’t known how to reach out and Aziraphale simply hadn’t tried. There’s a moment, the briefest sliver of time between Aziraphale recognising Crowley and remembering the seriousness of the situation, where Aziraphale’s heart is an open book to Crowley. He sees it all.

Eighty years of grief and loneliness, convinced that he’d driven away his only friend and the being he loves more than anything. Aziraphale has suffered as keenly as Crowley during their separation. The relief, love, and hope that rushes to fill in the cracks caused by their fight does more than any words ever could. Crowley feels Aziraphale realise that he’s never going to be alone on this planet, not while Crowley still has anything to say about it. If it weren’t for the Nazis and the impending discorporation, they might have shared some of this revelation in words. It isn’t the time, though. Not yet.

It’s 1967 and Crowley is getting increasingly desperate to get his hands on some holy water. The end is approaching and he knows that he’s going to do something stupid, hopefully with Aziraphale at his side. The more insurance he can have in place, the better.

It’s not a surprise when Aziraphale manifests in the passenger seat of the Bentley. It is a bit surprising that he’s more dressed up than usual, his hair styled, a fresh dab of cologne mixing with the soapy clean scent of him. Crowley is rendered speechless at the implication that Aziraphale has scrubbed up just to see him.

The flask changes hands and Crowley can only look dumbly at Aziraphale. A habitual taste of the air between them informs him that Aziraphale wants something very badly, but that he also wants not to want it.

Aziraphale is a creature of conflicts at the best of times, Crowley is used to that. But this is new. What Aziraphale wants, more strongly than he wants anything, is for Crowley to kiss him. He wants to be comforted and held by the person he loves as he commits this terrifying act of treason. Kissing a demon, however, is almost certainly a worse treason and so he desperately wants to not want that kiss.

Crowley almost cracks under the pressure of it, giving in and letting Aziraphale work through the consequences afterwards, but that’s not Crowley’s role in this scene. He knows he has to be the stronger one. Aziraphale wants to be kissed, but he needs them both to be safe. Crowley makes an offer of a lift, begging Aziraphale to understand that Crowley is there, wherever Aziraphale wants him to be. It’s painfully difficult, letting him get out of the car, but they have something they’ve never really had before: mutual confirmation of what this thing is between them.

They are at the Ritz, together just as Aziraphale had promised decades before. It’s not the first time and it certainly won’t be the last, but it’s special nonetheless. The fizz of champagne is tingling on his tongue and Aziraphale’s meaning-laden toast is still filtering through his brain.

“To the world,” Aziraphale had said, echoing Crowley’s own words. But it wasn’t just an echo, was it? Crowley forces himself to swallow away the taste of wine and focus his senses on his most deeply studied subject.

“To you, my world,” Aziraphale means, “to us, to the people we make of each other, to the me you allow me to be, to the you I’m privileged to know.” All wrapped up in three words. More meaningful than any three words could ever be, even _those_ words, Crowley thinks. His throat is dry with the thought, the sudden weight of realisation feeling less like being buried in rubble and more like being grounded to something powerful.

They’ve been through everything together. After everything that’s happened over the past 6000 years, over the past week, over the past 24 hours, they are still together. What could matter more than that?

Crowley takes another sip of champagne before looking at Aziraphale. There’s nowhere else he wants to be, no-one else he ever wants to sit beside. Feeling the full force of his own wants, Crowley is overwhelmed by how very _complete_ he feels when he’s beside Aziraphale.

He knows that his mouth is slightly open, that he looks dazed at best and utterly gormless at worst, but Aziraphale is looking at him through his eyelashes and projecting his feelings so hard that it’s a wonder Crowley can think at all.

He gives in to instinct instead, putting his glass on the table before reaching over to take Aziraphale’s from his hand. He leans in, slowly enough to let Aziraphale see what’s happening, slowly enough to let himself read Aziraphale’s reaction before there’s no turning back. He knows better than anyone how large the gulf can be between wanting something and the reality of having it delivered.

To Crowley’s utter delight, Aziraphale’s want only intensifies until his hands are grasping at Crowley’s lapels and pulling him in closer, bringing their lips together in a crash 6000 years in the making. It’s clumsy and inelegant: Crowley’s nose is crushed against Aziraphale’s cheek and his sunglasses are knocked askew, but it’s also perfect and deeply fulfilling. He pulls away after a few seconds, revelling in the feel of Aziraphale’s breath over his lips.

“How did you know?” Aziraphale asks, one hand coming up to stroke Crowley’s hair.

“I’ve always known, angel. Knowing you has been my only constant for as long as I can remember.” It’s enough of the truth for now. Crowley will tell Aziraphale everything as soon as they are somewhere more private. He knows that what he’s been doing might be seen as an invasion of privacy, and with humans it certainly has been, but Aziraphale knows what he is, accepts him as he is, _loves_ him as he is. Aziraphale will understand that _not knowing_ was never Crowley’s choice, what he’s done with the knowledge will count for far more.

With that thought firmly at the forefront of his mind, Crowley lets Aziraphale pull him back in for another kiss.

**Author's Note:**

> Toying with the idea of a smutty follow-up. Thoughts?


End file.
